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Fighting abuse of the Family and Medical Leave Act requires staying on top of trends in how employees take leave. This article rounds up 10 tips for monitoring workers' behavior fairly and accurately, including requiring certification of any reported medical condition, insisting on periodic status updates and using a relatively lengthy time frame to determine patterns. "Because evidence of a pattern of abuse is usually going to be circumstantial rather than medical, the employer must track such evidence over a long enough period so as to demonstrate that the suspicious absences are due to more than mere coincidence," this article notes.

Related Summaries

Employers must provide timely information to employees who are eligible for time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and a school district's failure to do so offers a cautionary tale, lawyer Meghan Siket writes. The district won its court case, but its actions could have left it liable had the teacher been cleared to resume work after the two-week FMLA period, Siket writes.

Gay and lesbian spouses who live in states that don't recognize same-sex marriage aren't eligible for job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to take care of a sick spouse. The group Human Rights Campaign is urging the U.S. Labor Department to change the way it determines eligibility for spousal leave.

The outsourcing of Family and Medical Leave Act administration can help employers comply with the law while realizing other advantages, writes Kevin Daft of WellPoint. An Aon Hewitt survey found that FMLA administration often poses challenges in employers' efforts to craft policies that meet the law's requirements. In addition, more than half of survey respondents said they could do a better job with administration of FMLA leave.

Handling intermittent leave requests under the Family Medical Leave Act can be a challenge, but with a little information and organization, you can get it right, according to this article. For example, employers can ask about the specific serious health condition for the leave, but cannot ask about general health or other issues.

AvMed successfully defended itself against an employee's claim that she was wrongfully terminated after taking time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act. A court found that the company had provided the employee enough documentation informing her of how long she could stay on leave.